Neurocomputers /article Review :: essays research papers fc

The dream of artificial intelligence that would onlyow a information processing system to learn, and thus get really ingenious, has proven to be something of a nightmargon so far. That failure has lead biomedical engineer William repeat and his team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University to look beyond silicon and even beyond light chips. Ditto points turn up that straight bys processors may be a lot faster, but theyre not a bit smarter than they were 40 years ago. Dittos processor is designed with living tissue. The tissue being nerve cells taken from leeches because they are big, easy to use and they learn quickly. Neurons are able to process images much than a million times faster than the fastest computer (Sincell, 2000). The boon review has two purposes (a) to enlighten the reader that the quest to build smart computers, microchip engineers look beyond silicon and light to living face cells and (b) to suggest that this future techno logy could be the basis of the next corking computer wave.The article being discussed out of Discover magazine states that brains deign tremendous problem solving abilities from two characteristics of their individual cells. First, a neuron can be in any one of thousands of different states, allowing it to lay in more information that a transistor, which has only two states, on and off (Sincell, 2000). Second, neurons can choose which other neurons to interact with by rearranging their own synaptic connections.Scientists have developed software that attempts to imitate the brains study process using only the yes-no binary logic of digital computers with all the connections in a personal computer wired back at the factory. Breaking a single one of these connections usually crashes the computer.This is not a problem for a neurocomputer Ditto says, because dynamic chaotic systems like these of course self-organize. An example of this would be the human heart. An isolated heart neu ron but sparks chaotically, without apparent intelligence. But when it is a part of the neuronal network in a living heart, it synchronizes with all the other neurons to create a solid heartbeat (Sincell 2000). The neurocomputer would work in a similar way. If a computer programmer posed a problem to a collection of neurons, such(prenominal) as create a regular heartbeat, the neurons would then figure out through trial and error how to rewire their own circuits to produce a steady rhythmic beat.